1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the exemplary embodiments relate to a method and apparatus for recognizing motion, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for sensing various motions of a user when a user is in motion while viewing a television (TV) or similar display device and allowing a user to interactively control a game or similar content.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a game or educational program has used a method of recognizing a user's motion while contents for the game or education are displayed on a display apparatus and allowing a user to control the contents based on the user's motion. Examples of a game console controlled using motion recognition include XBox® and Kinect® of Microsoft®, Playstation® Eyetoys® of Sony, and Wii® of Nintendo, etc.
XBox® and Kinect® recognize a user's motion and allow a game to be controlled trough motion capture without any controller. Such a control method based on the motion recognition of the game machine employs a three-dimensional (3D) depth sensor and a two-dimensional (2D) red, green, blue (RGB) image sensor to frontally recognize a human's activity such as gesture and motions using arms and a body.
Playstation® Eyetoys® is a color digital camera such as a webcam for Playstation®, which uses computer vision and gesture recognition for processing an image taken by the camera. This allows a player to interact with a game through motion, color detection and voice.
Wii® Fit® is game software used for health management, which measures a user's weight, degree of obesity, and balance of body through measurement of centroidal movement of the user's feet while the user remains stationary on a Wii® balance board.
Motion recognition technology in such game console is to remotely sense the motion and state of a human, which includes a method of using a 2D camera in front (Playstation®), a method of using a 2D or 3D depth camera (XBox® Kinect®), a method of grasping and moving a device with a hand (Wii®), etc. There is required a method of remotely sensing a human's natural motion without grasping the device.
While frontally sensing a human's activity, it is possible to recognize relative motion of hands and feet with respect to the body but it is difficult to accurately sense the motion of the feet.
In particular, the conventional motion recognition technology is difficult to measure absolute positions of a human's feet.